Looks great !  Cant wait to see it moving.

JH

Thanks JH. I am getting close.

Dan

Made a PCB last week for all the buttons on the front panel:


Soldering was a pain with all the jumpers that were needed. It took a few hours spread across a couple of days, and this is after all the components have been soldered to it:


The buttons are tactile buttons and they will have caps with different colours. For the overrides I used mechanical encoders.

Dan

Have been working on the wiring for the past few days. Interesting how many wires there are for machine which merely has 3 motors. Here is the component plate, a moment before I mounted it inside the cabinet, with all the components wired:


And all this to eventually control 3 motors

I decided that cutting power to the spindle drive on an Estop event was not what I wanted, since I didn't want the spindle to freewheel to a stop, but rather stop instantly, so I am using a contactor (bottom right) to cut the motor phases from the drive and switch in resistors between them instead, to dynamically brake the motor. I feel more comfortable with this.

Dan

Vice work Dan, very neat, tidy and compact.
Will be anxious to see this one finished !
Again, NICE !
Carry on,
Russ

Looking good Dan. Does the Ultra 5000 have limit inputs? I was thinking of using them to halt motion but found I didnt need it on the axis and on the spindles I have brakes.
Hood

Thanks guys.

Hood, the Ultra 5000 has an embedded controller and is intended for stand alone applications. It doesn't have any inputs/outputs tied to any hardware feature and it has a microcontroller which you can program in C to do whatever you want, so I believe you could program it for limit inputs. Are you suggesting this in place of disconnecting the motor from the drive on an Estop? Doesn't look safe to me...?

Dan

Was just thinking out loud and curious of what the 5000 actually were like in case I came across one at the right price
My thoughts on previous builds was to cut the power to the drive(like I do) but if the friction of the slides wasnt enough to brake things instantly (or very close) I was  going to use the spare contact on the contactor to  apply the overtravel inputs thus allowing the drive to instantly halt the motor.

Hood

Be aware that the Ultra 5000 don't accept any external signals (step/direction or other). They were not meant to be used with an external controller. They do have an option for electronic gear follower, however, and this is the mode I am planning to use mine in.

cut the power to the drive(like I do) but if the friction of the slides wasnt enough to brake things instantly (or very close) I was  going to use the spare contact on the contactor to  apply the overtravel inputs thus allowing the drive to instantly halt the motor.

And that is while the drive is not powered already? Not sure I would trust this. I have followed the recommendation in the Ultra manual for switching in braking resistors and it's been working great and I think I will stick with this approach.

Dan

How are you doing the follower? Using a SS and quad output?

Not reaally sure what you were meaning by "And that is while the drive is not powered already?"
What I was meaning was I was thinking of cutting the AC to the drive and at the same time having the spare contact of the contactor act as the overtravels into the drive. Hit the E-Stop, the drives AC gets cut, this will take a second or so to use up the power in the caps but with the overtravel getting seen by the drive it should stop instantly.

The resistors are a good way to go for sure. I dont see the wiring diag  in the manual I have but there are quite a few manuals on the 2098 drives so likely its in one of the others.
Hood